After nearly two decades, American country and gospel singer Josh Turner has accumulated quite a catalogue, and he’ll be performing many of those numbers in Wabash this month.

According to Turner, audiences will be hearing much more than the classics during his show at Honeywell Center on Thursday, Feb. 24, at 7:30 p.m.

“Of course, fans can expect to hear the hits they’ve come to know and love,” Turner said in an email interview with Whatzup. “Plus, we always have a couple surprises up our sleeves! It’ll be a fun show for all ages.”

Instead of planning any studio time, Turner says 2022 will be about finding what works best for what lies ahead.

“I don’t have any plans currently for new music, as I’ve released, or re-released, six records in the last five years,” he said. “My plan this year is to tour and evaluate the landscape, and see where my heart leads me.”

Getting into Christmas Spirit

Turner released King Size Manger in October, a long-awaited and oft-requested volume of Christmas music about two decades after his debut album.

“I’d been wanting to make a Christmas record my whole career,” Turner said, “but when you come to Nashville (Tennesse), you don’t come thinking, ‘Man, I want to go to Nashville and make a Christmas record (or any other concept record).’

“You want to establish yourself, have hits, sell records, and build a fanbase,” he added. “That had been my priority the last 20 years. I knew that the time would come to make a Christmas record, and this last year just felt right. I had the time to do it, and I had plenty of ideas. I ended up writing three of the 11 songs and arranged five others. I was very involved in the making of King Size Manger, and it’s a record I’m extremely proud of.”

According to his official bio, Turner’s “most treasured childhood holiday memories are of listening to Randy Travis’ An Old Time Christmas, as it was the soundtrack to the holiday season in his Hannah, South Carolina, home.”

Taking a Break

The effects of adapting to the pandemic caught up to Turner in January. He told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle this month that he took most of January off because he needed a break. Last year, he says, was busy.

“I never fully stopped working,” he told the newspaper. “But it slowed us down some. Once we kind of got rolling again in the summer of last year, I did about a year’s worth of work in six months.”

His Christian faith has been at the forefront of his vocation his entire career. According to his official site, Turner “released his gospel album I Serve a Savior in 2018, after waiting for what felt like the right time between mainstream projects.”

The site also stated that, for about two decades, Turner’s “deep, velvet voice has been the most recognizable on country radio. His unwavering dedication to the tenets of the country genre inspired a generation of country singers and bolstered an underserved segment of the fanbase.”

Branching out As Author

Turner published a book, Man Stuff: Thoughts on Faith, Family, and Fatherhood in 2014.

He told Country Stars Central, “It wasn’t really my intention to write a book, especially this early in my life and my career. I was approached by (publisher) Thomas Nelson to do this book, and it intimidated me at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I got excited about it. I got motivated to do it, and so it kind of went from there.”

He added that most of the stories in the book “were just really just kind of things that kind of shaped me and made me the man that I am. I shared little life lessons that I feel like I’ve learned from and people that I’ve learned from. It’s just different situations that I’ve been through with different experiences.”